Kirkpatrick Says Various Delegates at the UN Are Concerned That There Are Too Many Jews at the U.S.

February 1, 1982

NEW YORK (Jan. 31)

Jeane Kirkpatrick, the United States Ambassador to the United Nations, disclosed in a television interview tonight that various delegates at the UN have expressed concern that there are too many Jews in the U.S. Mission to the UN and about Jewish influence on American policy.

In her interview with Mike Wallace on CBS-TV’s “60 Minutes” program, Kirkpatrick said: “I think there’s a certain amount of concern about the, I know there is, about the number of Jews in the U.S. Mission under this Administration, in policymaking positions, I know there is because I’ve heard a good deal of whispers about it. And reported to me … ” At this point Wallace interjected, “From other delegations?” The Ambassador replied: “From other delegations, yes.”

Asked is she was suggesting that there is anti-Semitism in the UN, Kirkpatrick said that “Israel was a pariah nation at the United Nations” and that “there has been some concern expressed about Jewish influence within our Mission.”

Pointing out that she has been an unconventional Ambassador because “not only am I a woman, and not a man, but I’m, you know, an academic and not a diplomat,” Kirkpatrick said that she had brought along with her to the UN “a bunch of other people who are not normally too entirely acceptable as Ambassadors at the UN. I brought in Jews and Cubans as Ambassadors and neither of those are particularly popular or conventional kinds of ambassadorial representatives.”

SHARP CRITICISM OF THE UN

Kirkpatrick sharply criticized the UN, accusing it of double standards in its actions. She said: “The United Nations, very frequently, very very frequently acts on the basis of double standards, rather than even-handedly. That it applies to those nations whom it desires to make targets or scapegoats, very different standards, and judges them by them. Israel is one, South Africa is one, the non-Communist nations of Latin America are other examples.”

She also noted that a great deal of invectives are used at the UN. “Dirty names. Name-calling, racist, imperialist, Zionist, you know, that sort of thing.” The Ambassador was asked by Wallace if the UN should exist in view of all the criticism levelled against it. She replied: “Well, the UN does exist. You know, like death and taxes, the UN exists.”

ISSUE OF TIMERMAN’S VIEWS

The program also interviewed Jacobo Timerman, the former publisher of the Buenos Aires newspaper, La Opinion, who was arrested and later released and allowed to go to Israel. He claimed that if Kirkpatrick’s human rights policy had been the U.S. policy while he was in prison, he would still be in jail. “No question about that,” he said.

On that charge, Kirkpatrick replied: “I think Jacobo Timerman comes dangerously close to the non-democratic left in Argentina. And I’m afraid that I think that he isn’t careful enough to not associate himself with that non-democratic left. And while I have absolute sympathy with his suffering as a prisoner in Argentina, and I feel total solidarity with his problem there and would have done anything I could have, either as a private person or as a government official, to alleviate that, I don’t agree with the political uses to which he has put the human rights cause since he’s been out.”